KIDS GO TO THE WOODS… KIDS GET DEAD
 2009/83m

Director / Writer: Michael Hall / Cast: Leah Rudick, Andrew Waffenschmidt, Eric Carpenter, Amanda Rising, Kristen Adele, Seth Stephens, Meghan Miller, Kevin Shea, Joseph Campellone, Carly Goodspeed.

Body Count: 14

Laughter Lines: “You’ve got the transformation from victim to victor by the lead character, usually a girl, which, in itself opens a whole new realm of social and political undertones.”

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Thanks to Phil M for this one.

Grammar pedants will be annoyed by that title. ‘Get Dead’ indeed. Surely, it should be ‘Kids Become Dead’ or ‘Kids Obtain a State of Death’!?

Anyway, trivialities aside, as far as no-budget homages to the classics go, you could do a lot worse than this twee little number, which appears to err on the side of Friday the 13th (check the fonts used during the credits).

It’s Casey’s birthday and her boyfriend Derek is taking her with some friends to the requisite cabin in the woods. Her younger brother Scott tags along, much to the annoyance of Derek, a similarly destroyable jock Tommy, who’s pot-toking uncle owns the cabin. There’s three other girls too, naturally any cheap teen horror film made in the 2000s wouldn’t be complete without a hot lesbian couple.

Scott’s reading a book with the same title as the film and it seems to prophesize the events that follow. An interesting idea but nobody ever decides to explain why or how, so don’t dwell on it.

They flirt, try to have sex, call each other ‘bitch’ and ‘pussy’ a lot, drink beer, play with a Ouija board and mercifully soon start falling victim to the gas-masked killer, who, like Scott’s book, is never revealed, drawn out, or even named. But at least he has the decency to burn, slash, and repeatedly stab these assholes.

In addition to the usual shenanigans, Kids Get Dead (ugh…) has several sort of Grindhouse-lite ‘commercial interludes’ and is presented by Candy Adams (Goodspeed) as if it’s being aired on a late night horror show. It’s mildly amusing but the breaks tend to occur at peaks of tension, and as those are scarce anyway, these skits are like a vacuum cleaner set to ‘suck pace’.

Ultimately interesting for genre geeks and not horribly made considering the budget, but Bloody Bloody Bible Camp riffed on Friday so much better.

When quizzed on my favourite slasher films recently, I was gawked at for citing Urban Legend. Later that week I watched it and, as it always has, it reignited my love for it. Thus, when one might ask “Urban Legend, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” I can answer like so… Oh, mind those dastardly spoilers, now!

1. The Artwork

Still one of my favourite movie posters, and easily the best of the 90s crop: The cracked glass, the negative paper cuttings, the lighting, the eye… It’s perfect. Perfect, I proclaim.

2.The Beginning

Albeit shamelssly ripped off from Scream (which itself was a complete theft from When a Stranger Calls), the ‘classic’ killer in the back seat legend sets things up awesomely as Natasha Gregson Wagner unfortunately becames the real life proclamation of Bonnie Tyler’s seminal “every now and then I fall apart” lyric she happens to be singing as the movie loon rises up behind her.

Can you swing an axe inside a car? Doubtful, but this is just the first of Urban Legend‘s many fab anomalies.

3. Natalie’s moral center

At the movies when I first watched the film way back in 1999, the turning point to perfection came early on when Natalie (Alicia Witt – my kinda lady) challenged campus journo Paul on his story, reminding him that it was somebody’s life. Witt’s acting skills, effortlessly dwarfing those around her, make her an exceptional final girl.

4. Rent-a-Cop Reese

Campus head of security Reese (Loretta Devine – almost 50-years-old when she made this!) is a sassy, Pam Grier-obsessed backgrounder who’s more important than she initially appears and was the only character to return for the sequel.

5. Killer wardrobe

The loon in Urban Legend wears a creepy fur-lined Parka coat – the kind kids in Grange Hill wore in the 70s. Considering who it turns out to be, that hood can pack a lot down AND disguise the fiend’s face admirably.

6. …that everyone else wears

On no less than THREE occasions is the very same design of jacket used as as a fake-out. Everyone seems to wear it, from professors, to the janitor, even girls on the swim team – despite the sunny conditions outside.

This is an undeniably stupid plot aspect in a film with so much stock in passing off coincidences as something else, I think using it once would’ve been enough.

7. Laughter Lines and It’s-About-Time Lines

Even a super-talent like Witt could never deliver the line “It’s like somebody out there is taking all these stories and making them reality,” convincingly. It’s awful dialogue, matched later by a few other aural faux pas’ such as two girls bonding over a love triangle minutes after the killer has axed one of their friends to death…

However, this is buoyed by Natalie’s for once honest answer to the recurrent slasher movie question: “Are you OK?” On two occasions is she asked this and, on both, simply replies: “No.”

8. Danielle Harris as the skanky roommate

Once she was cute little Jamie Lloyd, ever on the run from her derange uncle in Halloween‘s 4 and 5; once she sat across the aisle from me at the world premiere of Hatchet II. But in between horror fame, Danielle Harris chews up this small, rather thankless role, as Natalie’s goth roommate, Tosh, who seems to do nothing but cruise chatrooms looking for a shag.

9. Contrived ways of getting events to accommodate the legends

The major obstacle in Urban Legend - both writing it and watching it – must be the method to tie all the murders together. It leans heavily on characters doing the right things at the right time for the killer to be able to exploit their actions: What if Damon didn’t get out of the car for a piss? What if Natalie hadn’t walked in on Tosh having sex before? It renders the entire film a crock in terms of reality, but, again it must be stressed that’s there’s never really been a real world slasher movie event – gun massacres don’t count – so it has to be stupid to work.

 10. Killer casting

While leads Jared Leto and Alicia Witt never became huge stars, they’re admirably propped up by a roster f familiar faces from various other films and TV shows of the era: Joshua Jackson makes the most of his small role as the peroxide-domed prankster Damon; future famous-for-being-drunk girl Tara Reid as Sasha, the borderline slut (but she’s not unpleasant); and who wouldn’t want to go to a class taught by Freddy Krueger!?

11. A long, drawn out chase scene

While it may not reach the dizzy heights of the chase scenes in Prom Night or I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend was savvy enough to know that nothing can get audiences going like a damsel being accosted by the killer. In this case, it’s Sasha (Tara Reid) who is stalked around the campus radio station by the axe-toting loon, apparently recreating “the one about the murder live on air” alluded to by some bit-parter in an earlier scene.

The scene wraps beautifully with Natalie arriving too late to help her friend, who has locked herself in a room on a higher floor and smacks futilely against the window. Note the filmmakers error here: The killer simply opens the previously locked door and comes in, THEN after axing Sasha to death, we see absolutely no blood on the weapon’s blade.

11. A car chase – albeit quite a slow one

There’s been horror, comedy, romance, and now action! Once Natalie’s on the run again, she’s picked up by the grumpy janitor and, of course, there are no other cars on the road when the killer reappears to make yet another legend reality!

12. Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening

Tossing EVERY cliche into the bag once more, those Parka jackets and everyone who owns them prove their worth when the night brings a massive thunderstorm that Natalie finds herself running through on more than one occasion. Still, putting the final girl through the wringer is nothing new…

13. Gotcha!

If you can read Latin, you’ll have already been informed by the college’s motto that ‘the best friend did it’. A friend of mine let it slip before it came out so there was sadly no surprise element, although Brenda’s deranged eyes and oversized shaggy perm soon outweigh the stupidity by their sheer awesomeness.

14. The Killer’s Exposition

The Scream-era had no want for motiveless loons killing because they just do, 90s slasher films had to have a killer with a proper reason behind their killing spree. Anybody remotely familiar with how these films work would’ve pegged the real motivation earlier on when Natalie confides in Brenda her terrible secret… The girl-on-girl scene is a catty-dialogue lover’s wet dream and although there’s NO WAY IN HELL a skinny girl could ever hoist up a grown man, survive being shot and falling out of a third floor window, she’s freakin’ awesome and proof that hell certainly hath no fury…

15. Brenda’s lizard face of death

*

 16. The significantly “less Hollywoody” new cast

Where the class of Pendleton University featured a uniformally beautiful group of friends, at nearby ‘Ashton’, the new class is a little less… shall we say… ‘conventional’. Though I do want the blond guy’s long hair and her glasses.

So there you have it, next time I ask myself “Urban Legend, how do I love thee, let me count the ways,” I can say with some certainty that I love it in at least sixteen different ways. Out.

MONSTER MAN

2003/18/92m

Director/Writer: Michael Davis / Cast: Eric Jungmann, Justin Urich, Aimee Brooks, Michael Bailey Smith, Joe Goodrich.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “‘A fucking virgin’? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

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College buds Adam (Jungmann) and Harley (Urich) are driving to the wedding of a girl who it turns out they are both in love with. Both also plan to pledge their love for her.

After pissing off some locals, they find themselves stalked by the malformed, stitched-up, driver of a monster truck who has a thing for stealing the limbs of local rednecks, and drag sexy hitcher Brooks into the nightmare.

This annoying Jeepers Creepers wannabe starts off earnestly enough, with some good comic turns from the appealing Jungmann, but the constant frat-boy humour soon becomes an itch you cannot scratch. Right up the ass. This rectal discomfort is further compounded like a sledgehammer sending a wooden stake further up said arse with a body count that never kicks in effectively.

The third act is predictably resolved to end on the happiest note possibly contrived from what little charm there is, but when a film can’t decide whether it wants to rival a decent horror pic of circumnavigate virginity jokes and become just another American Pie knock-off, there’s very little left to recommend.

Blurbs-of-interest: Jungmann had a small role in Drive In; Michael Bailey Smith was in Chain Letter; Aimee Brooks played one of the ghost children in Sorority House Massacre; Urich crops up in lots of low-rent horror films, including Horror 101.

 

The further down the dark alley of multi-sequel franchises we go, the less light there is, and so we’re left with just seven films to choose from – so once again I’ve chucked in a Saw sequel to prevent the cart from spilling…

So, on with the fives…

1985-1998

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child; Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers; Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror

Strangely, the three ‘big’ names in this round all have weirdness surrounding their titles: Friday 5 has no numerical suffix on the film itself, the same with Elm Street 5, and Halloween 5 appears on screen without the lengthy subtitle. Freddy and Michael’s fifth rounds, released within two months of one another, are both dreary affairs, whereas the fifth Corn movie is a fun, but of course entirely stupid and wildly off course with the previous and subsequent entries, leaving the gateway open for Jason 5, uh Friday 5 to take the win. Yes, it’s massively hated and not nearly as well made as the other films, but it’s by far the most fun!

2005-2012

Seed of Chucky; Saw V; Final Destination 5; Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines

As before, I’m cruelly giving Jigsaw the kick straight away, followed by Wrong Turn 5, which could have appeared in the prequel round, but as Wrong Turn 4, was the ‘official’ prequel, and this just a sequel to that which happens to take place before the original movie, it lands here instead, failing anyway. The same could be said for FD5, but given that it’s prequeldom is in fact the ‘ big twist’ and that it otherwise plays out as a regular sequel until the last few minutes, we find it here instead. Seed of Chucky is funny but I’m not wild about the franchise, so it loses out to Death itself.

The Finalists

So, not the most flashy of finalists and being that there are only two is also quite dull… For sixes, sevens, eights, etc, there won’t even be enough films to declare finalists, so make the most of it!

I don’t care what anybody says, Friday 5 is super-fun. So there’s no Jason (bar dream sequences), all manner of ridiculous set-ups, no end of babes willing to pop their tops, and just about every cut n’ dried slasher cliche in the book thrown into the mixing bowl, plus proto-Madonna punk girl Violet robot-dancing around her room.

So, it would be wrong to declare anything other than…

…as the winner.

THE Final Destination [4] was supposed to be Death’s last word. Its 3D gimmick – however dreadful – somehow managed to rake in masses of box office receipts, more than enough to prompt a further chomping of the bit. In spite of the utter crap left in the wake of the previous film, and more 3D to send all manner of implements and shrapnel flying at the audience, Final Destination 5 turned out to be something of a gem.

While not doing the same business as the earlier one, FD5 brought back Tony Todd as Death’s riddle-spouting pal, provided a best opening catastrophe since the original, and also packed a great twist, albeit one that leaked before the release date. If there’s a better #5 in the body count realm, I’m yet to encounter it.

CURSE OF THE FORTY-NINER

2002/15/83m

“Go ahead…scream.”

A.k.a. Miner’s Massacre

Director: John Carl Buechler / Writers: Antonio Olivas / Cast: Sean Hines, Carrie Bradac, Steve Wastell, Karen Black, Rich Majeske, Elina Madison, Alexandra Ford, Sangie, John Phillip Law, Richard Lynch, Vernon Wells, Jeff Conaway, Bradford H. Arden.

Body Count: 9

Dire-logue: “All the gold in the world can’t help buy you a clue.”

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Cheap and cheerful slasher film from the director of the divisive Friday the 13th Part VII, which begins with the inexplicable resurrection of a buried skeleton, which looks more than a little bit like Freddy’s revival in Elm Street 4. Skelly rises as a deformed miner, who dresses like The Creeper, and has a penchant for pick-axing those who come in search for for his hidden cache of gold.

Enter six young(ish) friends who have received a nugget from a relative of theirs who has since disappeared (dead, of course). There’s boring married couple Claire and Nick; greasy-haired loser Axl and his vacuous, schizoid girlfriend, Tori; and sexy Rox Ann, with her materialistic other half, Hayden. Together, they gather disjointed details of a mythical ghost who kills all who come to the area but promptly dismiss it all as redneck rantings and go camping anyway.

Soon after they discover the stash (with surprising ease) and camp out nearby to have sex and do all the things slasher film teenagers do, only to end up as barbecue meat when the fabled fiend appears toting his faithful pick-axe and an equally fatal spade.

There’s not much substance to this thrifty effort, but it bears the hallmarks of the early 80s, that earn it a little extra merit, plus some fleeting cameos from some once big names who probably owed some of the producers a favour or two. Points are deducted for flippant characterisations and poor attempts to squeeze laughs in while the story lags between slayings, so it’ll never replace My Bloody Valentine as THE miner slasher film, but the ghost town setting and some quirky kills help it hobble along nicely enough.

Blurbs-of-interest: Karen Black was also in Out of the Dark, Children of the Corn IV, and Oliver Twisted; Jeff Conaway (Kenicke from Grease) was in Do You Wanna Know a Secret; Elina Madison was in Butchered; Buechler had small roles in both Hatchet movies.

In this feature, Vegan Voorhees examines those jaw-dropping revelations that the slasher film loves to bat our way from the blue, like a pushy parent tossing softballs at a kid who doesn’t want to learn baseball.

This time, marvel at the double-twist that adorns the climax of Italiano-but-in-English flick, Shadow. As ever, if you’ve not seen it, QUIT READING NOW.

Set Up: Recently done-with-Iraq/Afghanistan American soldier David (Jake Muxworthy), delays his return home for a cycling vacation in the beautiful scenery of somewhere. I can’t remember if they even tell you what country he’s gone to. I digress, he befriends fellow-pedallar Angeline and they piss-off some redneck hunters before all four find themselves captured by a Gollum-esque sadist who enjoys torturing the men… David escapes to save Angeline but -

Twist: …it was all a dream. Well, a coma-imagined limbo-cum-fighting-to-stay-alive thing. David’s in hospital after he and his squadron fell on a landmine. The redneck guys are two colleagues; Angeline is the nurse; the killer-dude was clearly death on legs.

And speaking of legs, David has none left below the knee. Something that will undoubtedly thwart the planned cycling trip.

Problems with this revelation: It’s just naff, isn’t it? The kind of miracle twist you’d write at school thinking you’d fooled everybody! What’s worse, the limbo/fighting-death thing was done in Soul Survivors, although in that trash only good, middle-class, white, heterosexual, Christian teenagers were able to make it back.

Likely explanation: Decently cruel no-legs twist notwithstanding, Shadow seems to have been reverse engineered from the twist backwards. At 75 minutes, it’s a short affair, and with a decent edit could probably form part of an anthology to greater effect than a feature in its own right.

Disappointingly, aside from the gorgeous scenery, there’s little else in the film that hasn’t been done before. The torture scenes look like off-cuts from Hostel and the stalk n’ slashing is curiously tame and largely off-camera.

FEAR

1981/97m

A.k.a. Murder Obsession (DVD); Murder Syndrome; The Wailing (UK video)

Director/Writer: Riccardo Freda / Writers: Antonio Cesare Corti, Simon Mizrahi & Fabio Piccioni / Cast: Stefano Patrizi, Anita Strindberg, Silivia Dionisio, John Richardson, Henri Garcia, Martine Brochard, Laura Gemser.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “After you were sent away [SPOILER] developed an interest in black magic. It was by this means, coupled with my psychic power, that [SPOILER] was able to induce you to [SPOILER SPOILER].”

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The clock strikes giallo in this colorful black-glove mystery from gothic horror fixture Riccardo Freda, sometime mentor of Mario Bava.

Going under the usual phone-directory of alternate titles around the globe, Fear is an unusual and amusing slice of Italian cheese, in which actor Michael (Patrizi) visits his mother at her secluded country home with some industry friends in tow for a weekend “away from the smog” et cetera.

Much Psycho-ness abounds as the neo-incestual relationship between mother and son is apparent and Michael quite candidly tells his friends that he killed his father years before. He also begins ignoring Agnetha-esque girlfriend Debora, who has the longest dream sequence EVER, involving a spider with fingers.

*

Then soon after, the usual black-gloved loon starts doing away with the outsiders; gutting one, chainsawing another, axing a third.

Who is it? And why are the doing it? And who is it? Fear sort of collapses like a souffle as it pounds towards the bizarre ending, all black magic, cursed symbols, psychic abilities n’ such, but there’s a solid slasher movie opus lurking below the surface, and a killer with a rather standard motive.

Full of trademark zooms to suspicious expressions, a score that sounds like the composer had a seizure at the piano, bats on strings, boobs falling out of clothes at the slightest movement, and more than a few unintentional laughs from the dubbing and some of the cheapo effects on display, not least the axe in the head for one fellow. Did you know that when chopped in the noggin, the eyes actually disappear inside the skull!?

I mock, but I actually enjoyed Fear. It’s stacked with all manner of 70s/80s European fodder and Freda actually mixes the (then) new slasher craze with his gothic leanings quite well: Debora runs through the woods in a vicious downpour as lightning encroaches, and the house has a stone castle-like ambience, power that won’t stay on for long, and shitloads of candles everywhere.

Far and away the most intriguing thing about the film though, is Oliver. Oliver is mother’s butler/handyman/whatever. He takes in luggage, prepares supper, strikes a Five Star pose when about to be photographed and is the subject of nearly all of the zoom-red-herring moments. He appears at windows, stops for smell-the-fart moments when scrubbing the floor, walks in trances through the woods… What is he hiding? I’m not telling, but for now, behold the many stares of Oliver…

Despite all this super-fun, Fear seems largely unknown. A few websites I would bet on finding information about it came up blank and it’s almost as if it lay forgotten at the bottom of some VHS well throughout the 90s and 00s until it was dug up and bunged on DVD.

While not a must for fans, this is a whole lot better than a lot of Euro horror from the early 80s, with a little less sleaze to proceedings (despite the full frontal nudity and recurring “wardrobe malfunction” gag) and directed with substantial competence and flair by a bloke who was already in his 70s.